


broken bones and tattered clothes

by liggytheauthoress



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Temporary Amnesia, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:34:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 13,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25695094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liggytheauthoress/pseuds/liggytheauthoress
Summary: "He’s felt his heart stop many, many times over the years, is far more intimately acquainted with the sensation than any human being should be, but it has never, ever felt like this."In which Merrick does the one thing you should never, EVER do: separate Joe and Nicky.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 183
Kudos: 596





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so I watched this movie the day after it was released and it has refused to let go of my brain ever since so HERE WE ARE.
> 
> this fic is dedicated to the lovely Hazel_Athena, who is the reason I watched this movie in the first place and who has been kind enough to let me bounce ideas off them :3
> 
> title taken from "Run to You" by Pentatonix, and I highly recommend listening to the song because it is very much the vibe I'm going for with this whole fic.....

Steven Merrick didn’t become the youngest CEO in the pharma industry by being careless. It’s not that he’s not willing to take risks, of course, but he also knows when to be cautious, when to be careful with his assets.

So when Keane’s men start dragging the two unconscious test subjects away, Merrick holds up a hand for them to pause. “Wait.”

Keane glances over, brow furrowing a little. “Sir?”

“I’ve been thinking, Keane,” Merrick says. “I’ve been thinking about the age old warning not to put all my eggs in one basket…” He looks at Kozak and asks, “Can you make do with just one of them for now?”

“Of course, sir, but why-”

“I believe in being careful. If this site is compromised and they both escape, all this effort will have been for nothing, and there’s no guarantee how long it will take to catch them again.” Merrick turns back to Keane, saying, “We keep one of them here, in the main lab. Have the other moved to the secondary lab. Dr. Kozak, any preference?”

Kozak looks at the two men closely for a moment before answering, “Keep the one in the blue shirt here. My assistants will be able to handle the preliminaries with the other one.”

Merrick nods. “Excellent.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like it's worth mentioning that I have, like, four different WIPs/fic ideas and they're literally all some variation of "Nicky is separated from the others and Joe Reacts Badly" and honestly I'm not nearly as embarrassed about this as I should be.......
> 
> stop by my tumblr (liggytheauthoress.tumblr.com) if you want to cry about immortal!husbands with me


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joe wakes up to find one of his worst nightmares has happened: Nicky is gone.
> 
> Someone is going to pay.

Joe’s first thought is that this isn’t the most unpleasant way he’s ever woken up (that honor would probably have to go to that one time during World War II when he and Booker both caught fire from multiple mortars at once) but it could also be a hell of a lot better.

His second, third, and fourth thoughts, occurring in immediate succession and holding infinitely more importance, are all, _Nicolo._

He forces his eyes open, waiting just long enough for his vision to clear before he starts casting his gaze around, looking for the only thing that matters right now. But instead of being met with the familiar seafoam green gaze that’s greeted him for almost a millennium...

Nicky isn’t here.

Joe is strapped to a table, in a lab that’s not even worth taking in the details of, and _Nicky._

_Isn’t._

_Here_.

He’s felt his heart stop many, many times over the years, is far more intimately acquainted with the sensation than any human being should be, but it has never, _ever_ felt like this.

Joe whips his gaze around the room again, over and over, as if some nook or cranny will reveal his heart to him if he just looks close enough, except it _doesn’t_ , and it’s like the fucking room is mocking him with Nicky’s absence…

He’s not even fully aware of tearing through the straps.

The first two guards are dead before they have time to blink.

Joe kills six more before someone manages to shoot him in the head, and then everything goes dark once again.

* * *

When he wakes again, he’s back on the table, the straps having been reinforced with honest-to-god chains, and there are three guards in the corner with semi-automatics pointed directly at his face. And Nicky still isn’t here.

But the woman from before, the one who looked at Joe like he was a slide under a microscope instead of a human being who had just been stabbed six times, she’s here. Still looking at him like that, like he’s just another lab rat, like he’s not being torn apart from the inside out with fear.

“Where is he?”

The woman doesn’t even acknowledge that he’s spoken. She sticks a needle into him instead, not that Joe can even feel it over the pain in his chest right now. Joe thrashes beneath her touch, not in an effort to get away but in an effort to reach out and grab her, to make her _tell him_. He pushes uselessly against his bindings, snarling when it accomplishes nothing.

She’s close enough for Joe to make out the name on her coat - Kozak - but not close enough to reach with his hands or teeth. Smart woman.

“ _Where is he?_ ” Joe growls again. “What the _fuck_ did you people do to him?”

“This will be over much faster if you hold still.”

Joe lets loose a stream of curses that would make even Andy proud. He wrenches against the restraints again, but Kozak doesn’t so much as flinch. Her attention remains on where the needle is still piercing Joe’s side, her eyes bright with fascination. “Can you feel the wound trying to close?”

No, he can’t, Joe can’t fucking feel _anything_ right now apart from the realization that for the first time in over seven hundred years, _he doesn’t know where Nicky is_. He doesn’t know and this bitch won’t tell him and before he can stop himself, he thinks of Quynh. Quynh, who has been trapped at the bottom of the sea for half a millennium because they couldn’t find her, who has been made to suffer more than any living thing should ever have to suffer.

He thinks of Andy, of how broken their leader was in the decades after Quynh was taken. How the decision to finally give up left her a hollow shell of herself for another ten years. Even now, centuries later, Andy still bears the scars Quynh’s loss left on her soul, the theft of her other half leaving wounds no amount of time will ever be able to heal.

He thinks of Nicky, strapped down in a lab like this one, with another soulless doctor standing over him as they poke and prod and _hurt_ him. Nicky, who would have had to wake up without Joe, who doesn’t know where Joe is either, who is probably feeling the same fear Joe is feeling.

“I’m going to kill you,” Joe says in a low, even voice, looking Kozak dead in the eyes. It’s a voice he rarely uses, one reserved solely for idiots like this who think they can hurt Nicky and get away with it without facing retribution for it. “You and your boss. Whatever you people do to him, I’m going to do to you...and then I’ll keep going. And the longer you keep me here, the longer you _keep me away from him_ , the more I will drag it out before I finally let you die.” 

And now a tiny bit of fear does flicker across Kozak’s face, just for a moment. Joe usually doesn’t find any genuine enjoyment in knowing someone is afraid of him...but in this case, he’s happy to make an exception.

* * *

He loses track of time after that. Kozak cuts and slices at him, pulls out pieces of him, carves him open just to see if he’ll heal. Joe’s pretty sure he sees more than of his organs in her hands. At one point she injects him with something that burns through his veins like acid, and it takes him an excruciating five whole minutes to die, and the whole time she just stands over him taking notes.

Through all of it, all he can think is, _Are they doing this to Nicolo too?_ Is some monster, hiding behind a medical degree and delusions of grandeur, mangling and mutilating him over and over again, the way Kozak is doing to Joe?

The thought of Nicky - his Nicolo, who, despite his skills as a warrior, remains one of the gentlest souls Joe has ever known, who these people aren’t worthy of even _touching_ \- suffering any of this hurts more than anything Kozak could possibly do to him.

Joe dies, more than once, but it’s barely a reprieve, because every time he comes back, there’s nobody there with him, no familiar hands grounding him as his body finishes knitting itself back together.

He imagines Nicky coming back after the torture forces his body to give out, waking up alone in a cold, sterile lab surrounded by people who barely even see him as a person. Joe can’t remember the last time one of them woke up alone, he’s supposed to _be there_ when Nicky opens his eyes, _always_ , and the thought of him waking by himself without Joe there to soothe him makes Joe jerk against his restraints in frustration.

“Please,” he pleads with Kozak, long past the point of being too proud to beg, “ _please_ , just _tell me where he is_.”

Kozak doesn’t say anything.

Joe closes his eyes and screams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel obligated to warn people not to expect any kind of regular posting schedule. My muse and I are attending couples counseling at the moment but it's not going very well.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the others arrive and Joe really, really just wants to kill somebody.

Andy and Booker arriving should be a godsend.

It’s not.

Not even close.

* * *

He’s going to kill Booker.

Joe knows the death won’t be permanent, but that’s fucking fine with him, because it just means he can do it again. And again and again, slowly and painfully, until he thinks Booker has finally learned why fucking with Joe’s family is a line that no one should ever, _ever_ cross.

Anyway, a permanent death would just give Booker the peace he’s been craving so desperately, and there is no way in hell Joe is going to give him that after what he’s done.

“Joe, please believe me, I never meant for it to happen like this-”

“I don’t give a fuck _what_ you meant!” Joe focuses on the rage, lets it center him, almost a welcome reprieve after hours and hours of nothing but paralyzing fear. “You could have _killed Andy_ , and Nicky…” He drags in a shuddering breath, just the mere act of saying Nicky’s name enough to make his eyes sting. “I don’t know where he is. Do you understand that? _I don’t know where he is_.”

“We’ll find him, Joe,” Andy says, sounding determined despite her obvious pain and exhaustion. Like the only thing keeping her from giving up is the knowledge that one of their own is still missing. “We will. But I need you to focus for me right now, okay? Did you see or hear anything that could help us find him?”

Joe slams his head back against the stretcher, unable to tolerate Booker in his field of vision any longer. “I don’t know. We got here, we met that whiny little pissant, they knocked us out. I woke up here alone.” He squeezes his eyes shut, voice breaking when he says, “It’s been _hours_ , Andy. They won’t...they won’t even tell me what they’re doing to him…”

“Hey, don’t go there right now. Nicky will be _fine_ , okay?” Joe doesn’t see the grim smile on Andy’s face, but he hears it in her tone loud and clear when she continues, “And when we find him, those fuckers won’t know what hit them.”

And that, Joe can _definitely_ agree with.

* * *

It turns out that Nile is the godsend Joe had been hoping for, and if he hadn’t loved her before, the sight of her punching Kozak square in the mouth would definitely have done the trick. He can’t even begrudge her refusal to leave Booker behind, because she doesn’t truly understand the weight of what Booker has done, not yet.

They can deal with that later.

Joe has higher priorities right now.

“You three go get Merrick,” he says, yanking a semi-auto off one of the dead guards, ignoring Andy’s look of disapproval. “I’m going to find Nicky.”

“Joe, we don’t even know if he’s in the building or not-”

“Copley said Merrick mentioned another lab,” Nile interrupts, sliding a fresh clip into her gun, and Joe could honestly kiss her. “Merrick didn’t say where, though. 

Joe feels himself bare his teeth in a humorless grin. “Let me get my hands on him. He will.”

* * *

He stares at the flattened remains of Steven Merrick and curses under his breath. Joe wants to do more, wants to shout and scream and rage, because they _needed_ him, needed to make him tell them where the fucker had locked Joe’s heart away, but they’ve drawn enough attention to themselves as it is. Right now getting away clean is what they need to focus on.

Getting arrested or recaptured won’t help Nicky. That, and only that, is what gets Joe into the passenger seat of the car.

“Fuck, Joe, I’m sorry,” Nile mutters, leaning heavily against Booker in the back seat. “He was...he was gonna shoot Andy...”

“It’s okay, Nile,” Joe tells her in a hoarse voice (except it’s _not_ okay, _none of this_ is okay, and it won’t be until he has Nicky in his arms again). “You did what you had to do.”

Andy waits until she’s pulled away from the curb and is halfway down the block before speaking. “We’ll go back to Copley. If he can dig up all that information on us, he can find Nicky.”

She sounds beyond exhausted, and Joe feels a wave of guilt - he’s been so focused on Nicky that he’s barely checked to see if Andy is...Well, she’s not okay, he already knows that, but he doesn’t know how not okay she actually is.

“Do you want me to drive?” he asks quietly. Truthfully, he’s not sure he should be behind the wheel right now, but if it’s what Andy needs…

“I’m good, Joe.” She doesn’t look it, not by a long shot, but mortal or no, Andy knows her limits better than Joe knows them. “You don’t know how to get to Copley’s. And frankly I don’t trust you not to get us into an accident right now.”

Joe makes a sound that’s not quite a laugh and slumps back in his seat. He makes the mistake of glancing in the rearview mirror, intending to check on Nile but meeting Booker’s hollow eyes instead. His lips curl into an involuntary snarl and he holds Booker’s gaze until the Frenchman has to look away, the guilt radiating from him almost palpable.

“ **Later** ,” Andy tells him in Greek. “ **We deal with him later.** ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel obligated to mention that I love Booker, I just...also love the idea of Joe being absolutely brutal towards him after the betrayal (look, you mess with Joe's husband, you face the consequences)
> 
> Comments help lure the muse out from where it likes to wedge itself underneath my desk!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They manage to figure out where Nicky is, but Copley has some disturbing information for them...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone please take a moment to give Joe credit for not murdering Booker yet, not even once. It's been hard.

It takes Copley almost three days to find the lab.

It feels like three centuries.

Joe eats only when Andy or Nile puts food in front of him and threatens to shove it down his throat if he doesn’t cooperate. Which he does - not because their threats mean anything to him, but because he knows he’ll need all of his strength when they go to get Nicky out.

During the day, he does his best to keep busy. He fusses over Andy, and while she grumbles about being coddled, she lets him fuss, knows he needs something to focus his attention on right now. He keeps an eye on Nile, makes sure she’s settling in as best as she can. Avoids Booker like the plague - not that that’s difficult, with how the other man skulks around like a kicked dog.

At night, Joe doesn’t sleep. Instead, he moves through Copley’s house like a ghost, forever seeking eternal rest. More often than not, he finds himself standing in front of what Nile has named Copley’s “Wall of Crazy,” eyes roving over the past hundred and fifty years of their lives. And if he reaches out to brush his finger across the blurred photos of Nicky, nobody is there to see it.

He doesn’t let himself think about the loss of Andy’s immortality, because if he does, he’ll start wondering which of them will be the next to lose it...or if another one of them has lost it already.

 _You would know_ , he reminds himself fiercely. _You would feel it if he was gone._

No matter how many miles might separate them, Joe knows for a fact, knows it down to his very core, that if Nicky’s time came, he would feel it. Would feel his own heart stop in his chest at the same instant Nicky’s stopped for the final time.

He clings to that knowledge like a drowning man clinging to a life preserver. Because as long as Nicky is alive, Joe can save him. Joe _will_ save him.

* * *

“I found it,” Copley announces, bursting into the living room where Joe, Andy, and Nile are cleaning their weapons.

Joe is on his feet immediately. “ _Where?_ ”

Copley sets his tablet down on the coffee table. “There’s a lab just outside Edinburgh. Maybe a seven hour drive from here.”

“That’s so close...Why was it so hard to find?” Nile asks. “Shouldn’t there be records, permits, something like that?”

A look passes over Copley’s face that Joe doesn’t like. “I’m not sure this is the kind of lab that would be on public record,” he says carefully. “From what I was able to find, Merrick wasn’t just involved in the pharmaceutical business. Apparently he also had a few military contracts. Developing experimental bioweapons.”

There’s a long silence, during which Joe grips the handle of his scimitar so tightly he feels his knuckles crack, and Andy looks like she might throw Copley through the window. “Fucking bastard,” she mutters. “All that bullshit about wanting to help humanity…”

“When do we leave?” Joe asks, forcing himself to focus on the task of getting Nicky back instead of wondering what Merrick’s people could have potentially been putting him through for the past few days. The blind rage can come later, once those people are in front of him, within reach of his blade.

Instead of answering him directly, Andy looks at Copley and says, “Show us everything you found. We leave in twenty minutes.”

* * *

“He’s not coming.”

Joe stares down Andy from across the hood of the car, his arms folded. Booker is hovering awkwardly a few yards away, head downcast, like a condemned prisoner awaiting execution.

“Joe-”

“We can’t trust him! He sold all of us out, he almost _killed you_ , Andy! Nicky is being held in a fucking bioweapon lab right now and it’s _his fault!_ ”

Andy stays calm in the face of his anger, and somehow that just pisses Joe off even more. “Our odds are better with four of us, you know that. Booker being there means it will take less time to find Nicky once we get there. Time you’re wasting right now by fighting me on this.”

It’s a low blow, but both Joe and Andy know that fair fighting and practical fighting rarely overlap.

Joe growls in frustration. “Fine,” he spits out. “I suppose if things go badly, we can offer him in exchange for Nicky.” He offers a sneer in Booker’s direction. “That’s what you wanted after all, isn’t it, Booker?”

A week ago, Joe would have been horrified by the idea of talking this way to the man he’d called brother for over two hundred years. But that was then, before Nicky had been taken from him and subjected to god knew what, before Booker had taken two centuries of respect and trust and _family_ and razed them to the ground.

He doesn’t wait for Booker’s answer, just climbs into the passenger seat and snaps, “Let’s go.”

Joe closes his eyes as the others finish loading the car and get inside. Takes the anger and the fear that have been eating him up for days and hones in on them, lets them settle over him like armor until he’s almost calm.

 _Hold on just a little longer for me, beloved_. _I’m coming for you._


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The good news: they finally get to Nicky. Unfortunately, there might also be some bad news...

He doesn’t know how long he’s been here. Isn’t entirely sure there was ever a time when he _wasn’t_ here.

He thinks there must have been, because in the rare moments where he’s able to focus on something besides the pain that’s become the epicenter of his being, he sees flashes of what must be the world outside the Lab.

A desert, washed out waves of dust and sand and stones beneath an endless expanse of sky. The rich blue of the ocean, dappled with bright sunlight as the water laps against the rocky shore. A tiny cottage, lit only by candlelight and the glow of the small hearth, sparsely furnished but somehow still inviting.

He sees images of people, too, people besides the Doctors. Two women, warriors, fighting side by side like a pair of vengeful goddesses. A fair man whose face is lined with sadness and loss. A young black woman with braided hair and eyes bright with curiosity.

There’s another man. The image he sees most often, the one he finds himself clinging to when his awareness starts to slip away again. The man has a head of dark curls and the most blinding smile he’s ever seen, and when that man is in his mind’s eye, the pain is replaced by something so warm and comforting he wants to weep.

He _knows_ them, he’s sure of that. Tries to remember who and what they are, recall anything more than just the hazy images of their faces. Because he’s certain of this much: these people, whoever they are, whatever they are to him...they’re _important_.

* * *

“Five minutes out,” Andy says, taking her eyes off the road long enough to glance at Joe. “You good?”

Joe nods silently, fingers flexing around the barrel of his M870. Thanks to Andy’s total disregard for speed limits (along with Nile’s exasperated reminders that, “You’re mortal now, Andy, if you wrap us around a tree you’re not gonna walk away from it!”), they’ve made the seven hour drive in less than six, but it’s still taken too long. Every second away from Nicky is too long.

He’s been keeping himself calm for the past couple of hours by going over the checklist in his head, reviewing the steps of the plan he’s outlined during the drive.

Step 1: Storm into this fucking place and kill every last person who _dares_ to stand between him and Nicky.

Step 2: Kill Booker. Slowly. As many times as Joe can get away with before Andy or Nicky makes him stop. Leave him to rot.

(Step 2a: Throw Booker to the white-coated wolves if they’re so desperate for a test subject. Joe has absolutely no qualms about doing so if it eases the process of getting Nicky back.)

Step 3: Take his family to Malta and let Andy and Nile explore the island while he doesn’t let Nicky out of bed for at least a week.

It’s a good plan. Solid. Admittedly, he hasn’t cleared it with Andy beyond Step 1, but he’ll worry about that later, once his heart is back at his side where it belongs and Joe can breathe again.

“Still don’t like the idea of splitting up, boss,” Joe admits.

“You saw the blueprints Copley gave us. If we don’t know where in the building they’re keeping him, it’ll be faster this way.”

“You honestly trust _him_ alone with Nile?” Joe doesn’t say Booker’s name, but the venom lacing his voice makes it perfectly clear who he’s talking about.

“I trust that more than I trust you alone with him, or more than you trust him alone with me.” Andy slows the car down, pulling off the road into a patch of overgrown shrubbery, and kills the headlights. “All right, we’re walking the rest of the way. When we get inside, Nile, Book, you take the upper levels. If you find him, let us know over the comms and we’ll come get you.” She turns and grasps Joe’s forearm, and in her eyes, Joe sees a touch of the feral protectiveness he knows is all over his own face. “Let’s go get my little brother back.”

* * *

“It’s been eight hours. Give him another injection.”

He winces at the voice that pulls him back to semi-awareness, the voice he’s come to hate more than anything he can imagine. The Woman. She’s not always here, not always the one hurting him, but she’s so much worse than the other Doctors.

The pain has been reduced almost to numbness, and he savors that for the brief few seconds before the familiar sting of a needle pierces his arm, and then the agony begins again.

He knows not to fight it now, at least. In the beginning - whenever that was - he struggled, fought back against the pain, but he learned very quickly that movement just made it even more unbearable.

The Woman is cutting him. Again. He doesn’t know why she still does it, surely she’s taken enough pieces of him by now. His entire torso blooms with white hot heat as the scalpel slices through flesh and tissue - he doesn’t understand how he even as anything left to cut into. It makes no sense, but no matter what the Doctors do to him, no matter how much they take from him, sooner or later he realizes he’s whole again.

He thinks he may have died, more than once. And then come back. Which shouldn’t be possible, but he can’t think of any other explanation.

He thinks maybe this is Hell.

* * *

Dr. Meta Kozak makes a pleased noise as she examines the most current samples, satisfied when she sees the rate of healing is consistent with all the data she’s gathered over the past few days. True, the test subject’s abilities mean his cells are different from a normal human’s, but while he heals more rapidly, the process itself is almost identical to what she’d see in any other man.

She’ll need at least a few weeks with these trials, but it looks as though Serum W-93 will be ready for military testing sooner than expected.

Kozak stands up from her stool and moves back over to the table, pulling on a new pair of gloves. The test subject doesn’t react to her approach, hasn’t for a couple of days; he just lies there, breathing raggedly, muscles clenching and unclenching as W-93 works its magic.

Now that she has the latest samples, she can return to her other tests for a while, until the serum starts to wear off. The other doctors had seemed...disturbed when she insisted on gathering other data while the subject was still feeling the effects of W-93, but Kozak has never believed in wasting time, and it’s not as though she can do any permanent damage anyway.

She grabs a fresh surgical towel and begins to wipe away the dried blood left over from earlier, wanting a blank slate. The test subject jerks weakly beneath her touch, shying away from the contact, but she ignores it.

When the blood is finally cleaned, Kozak drops the towel and reaches for one of the scalpels on the tray beside the table.

She almost knocks the entire thing over when she hears the gunfire outside the lab.

_Fuck. Not again._

* * *

Nile and Booker work their way through the building quickly and efficiently. The security is tighter here, but even the extra soldiers aren’t a match for two pissed off immortals.

Booker still takes more than a couple of bullets for her.

They hit the tenth floor and move down the corridor, Nile cursing when a bullet rips through her shoulder. “Y’know, this is getting pretty fucking old real fast,” she mutters, taking down the first two men with a couple of well-aimed headshots.

“Get used to it.” Booker pivots around in front of her just in time to catch the next shot in his hip, but it doesn’t even slow him down as he raises his own gun and downs the shooter.

“You can stop doing that.” Nile stops talking long enough to grab a semi-auto from one of the bodies and mow down the next wave of guards. “I’m not the one who’s pissed at you.”

Booker just grunts.

They fight their way through the first few labs, all empty, and Nile starts to think this floor might be another dead end…

Except when Booker flings open the next door, Nicky is right there, strapped down just like the others had been. 

And that bitch of a doctor is standing over him with a scalpel in her hand.

* * *

He’s just about to let the burning in his veins pull him back under when the noise starts. A sharp, piercing blare, followed by the distant sound of gunshots and yelling and the Woman cursing under her breath. Distantly, he wonders if he should be worried...but instead the gunfire fills him with something he thinks might be hope.

Things get a little chaotic then. 

The door bursts open with so much force he can feel the table vibrate.

There’s another gunshot, and then the Woman goes down, a bright crimson stain blooming on her thigh.

A voice that sounds familiar. “Fuck, Nicky!”

And then two people standing over him, faces drawn with worry, and he recognizes them instantly. The sad man and the girl with the braids, just as he’d imagined them. He can’t recall their names or how he knows them, but he does know, down to his very core, that they’re here to help him.

He smiles weakly up at his saviors and asks the only thing he can think right now: “Who _are_ you?”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The family is finally all together again...more or less...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for this chapter taking so long. School has started back up again and that, unfortunately, takes priority over any fic writing (believe me, I'd much rather focus on this, but), so updates are going to be slower now. And I did warn y'all about my muse, so.

Fighting alongside Andy is always different than when Joe fights with Nicky - Nicky feels like an extension of himself, two halves of a whole moving in perfect sync - but after so many centuries they’re still a deadly pair. The guards barely present an obstacle, especially right now, when it’s Nicky they’re fighting to get to.

Every empty room only fuels Joe’s fury and frustration, turns them into an unrelenting force driving every shot he fires, every swing of his blade. He’s not an inherently violent man, he rarely finds any kind of pleasure in it, feels every kill...but Nicky has always been his exception to everything.

_You will not keep me from him._

* * *

They’ve taken shelter in the stairwell for a couple of seconds at Joe’s insistence, just long enough for Andy to get her breath back and for him to check on the bandages under her shirt, when Nile’s voice crackles over the comms. “We found him. Tenth floor.”

Joe doesn’t even look at her before he takes off, Andy at his heels. “We’re on our way,” she says, still panting. “How is-”

“He’s healing.” It should be good news, but something in Nile’s voice makes Andy’s gut clench, and judging by the way Joe’s steps falter, she knows he heard it too. “But something’s...something’s wrong.”

Another unit of soldiers bursts into the landing above their heads. Joe turns back just in time to shove Andy down behind him, his body jerking with multiple bullet impacts. He crumples in on himself, but still manages to raise his gun and pick off two of the guards without even having to look.

Andy takes care of the others and then they’re moving again. “What do you _mean_ , something’s wrong?” she demands, as if their conversation hadn’t been interrupted.

“He doesn’t know who we are.”

Joe almost trips over the step in front of him and has to reach out to steady himself on the railing. Andy hears him cursing under his breath in Arabic and grabs his shoulder. “Sometimes the brain takes longer to catch up, Joe, you know that.”

He nods. “It doesn’t matter right now,” he grits out in a way that indicates it very much does matter, and starts up the stairs again, the tension in his body reminding Andy of a coiled spring. Andy hasn’t bothered with religion for five thousand years or so, but she still finds herself praying that whatever is wrong with Nicky is just temporary, because she doesn’t know what they’ll do if it’s not.

She doesn’t _want_ to know what Joe will do.

She’s not surprised when Joe abandons his gun entirely in favor of his sword as they burst into the tenth floor hallway to find a fresh wave of soldiers waiting for them. It has nothing to do with tactics or strategy when Joe does this - it has _everything_ to do with making things personal.

If she didn’t have to worry about a bullet putting her down for good (and if her side hadn’t felt like it was on fire for the last ten minutes), she’d be doing the same thing with her labrys.

They reach the lab, Andy half a step behind Joe, and she pauses just inside the doorway to take stock of the room. It’s the same set-up as London: Nicky is shirtless, lying on a table just like the ones Andy and the others had been strapped too, although by now Nile has finished undoing his bonds. There’s very little blood on him, which means at least he hasn’t been cut open recently.

He watches with hazy, but curious eyes as Joe crosses the room in three long strides, halting only when his knees bump the edge of the table. “ _Nicolo…_ ” Joe hovers over him for a moment, like he’s afraid to touch him, and Andy knows they’re both wondering the same thing: does Nicky recognize them?

“Is that my name?” Nicky asks quietly, and Andy’s heart sinks to her stomach. She sees every line of Joe’s body go rigid and is suddenly thankful she can’t see the expression on his face.

“Yes.” Joe sounds like he’s been punched in the stomach. “But we call you Nicky, most of the time.” He reaches out a hand towards Nicky’s forehead, but stops, an aborted gesture to brush the other man’s sweat-dampened hair back. “Can...can you remember anything?”

Nicky’s brow furrows in concentration. He looks from Joe to Andy, over to where Nile is standing on his other side with Booker hovering in the background, then back to Joe again. “I think...I think I must know you. All of you. But I can’t…” He shakes his head weakly. “I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Andy says, coming up to stand where Nicky can see her better, half-hoping the sight of her will give his memory a bit of a jump start. Although if Joe couldn’t do that, she doubts she will. “We’ll figure this out, I promise.”

“You might want to start by asking her.” Nile points to the corner of the lab, and Andy finally sees the person she’d been too focused on Nicky to notice before now.

It’s the same doctor. Of course it’s the same doctor. Andy knows Joe recognizes her immediately too, able to feel every one of his muscles tensing even with the distance between them. This is the woman who spent over twenty-four hours repeatedly torturing Joe to death, and now she’s spent even more time doing the same to Nicky, if not worse…

Joe starts to move forward, but Andy places a hand on his arm, stopping him with a silent, _I’ll take care of this._ She’s not sure how much of his cooperation is him listening to her and how much is just him not wanting to move too far away from Nicky - she expects it’s the latter - but she’ll take it either way.

Kozak stares up in terror as Andy stalks towards her. “ _You_ ,” Andy growls, holstering her gun in order to pull out one of her more lethal-looking knives. “Start talking. What the _fuck_ did you do to him?”

Kozak makes a noise that sounds almost like a whimper and presses further into the corner. Andy kneels down in front of her, ignoring the way it pulls at her wound, and says in a very careful voice, “If you don’t talk to me willingly, I’m going to let Joe ask you instead. And believe me, you _do not_ want that. So _talk_.”

“It’s...it’s an experimental drug we’re developing for the military,” Kozak stammers, eyes darting wildly around the room. “For interrogations.” She must sense the answer isn’t enough for Andy or the others, because she continues, “It’s designed to strongly amplify all physical sensations so that the subject is more responsive to…”

“To torture,” Andy finishes for her. 

Behind Andy, Joe curses in Arabic. “You tested that, didn’t you?” he demands, voice low and dangerous. “You wouldn’t just inject him with it, you’d want to see if it worked…”

“I...There were other tests I needed to run, it made more sense to-”

Kozak is cut off as Joe storms past Andy, slamming the doctor into the wall with one hand wrapped around her neck. “Tests like the ones you did to me? You gave him a drug that would make his pain unbearable and then did _that_ to him?”

She gives a choked off whine of fear. “Yes.”

Joe closes his eyes and breathes in slowly, in the way he always does when his wrath is simmering under the surface of his skin, barely contained. Andy has seen it many times over the years - all of them times when Nicky had been hurt or captured - and she knows that once it boils over, they won’t be getting any more information out of Kozak.

She squeezes Joe’s bicep, a silent command, and he loosens his grip just a bit. Andy waits for Kozak to pull in a few gasping breaths before asking, “Why doesn’t he remember anything?”

“The drug affects the nervous system.” Kozak has started to physically tremble under Joe’s hand, and the sight is more gratifying than Andy is willing to admit out loud. “It’s...it’s possible that the combined influence of it and the...the pain of the other tests was too much for his brain to handle…”

And then Joe asks, his tone terrifyingly quiet, the question they’ve all been wondering: “Will he heal?”

Kozak slumps against the wall, as if she knows the answer she’s about to give is going to seal her fate.

“I don’t know.”

Joe snarls and physically lifts Kozak up by her neck, bodily flinging her into the steel shelving lining the wall. She hits the metal with a satisfying clang before she slumps to the floor, but before she can try to crawl away Joe is driving his knee into her back, pinning her in place.

He looks to Andy.

Andy hands him her pistol. “Make it quick.”

Joe nods. Kozak screams as he digs the barrel of the pistol into her temple, hissing, “You have no idea how desperately I want to drag this out. To put you through every ounce of the pain you put him through, when you are not worthy of even _touching_ him. You deserve no less for what you’ve done.” He takes another deep, controlled breath, his entire body quivering with rage. “But as much as I want to hurt you, I want to get my family to safety more. So…”

“Please, _please, don’t, I’m sorry, I-_ ”

Whatever Kozak had been about to say is silenced by the gunshot.

Andy watches Joe hunch over the body, his shoulders shaking. She gives him a few moments, knows they need him calmer than this in order to get out of here. “Joe. We need to go.”

He jerks his head in an approximation of a nod and stands, handing her gun over without taking his eyes away from where they’re burning holes in what’s left of Kozak. “She deserved worse than this.”

“I know. But getting Nicky out of here is our priority right now.” Andy steps close, uses her free hand to turn Joe’s face towards her. “You with me?”

One more shudder racks through Joe’s frame before he stills, looking past her at where Nile is helping Nicky to sit up. “I’m with you.”

“Good. Then let’s get the fuck out of here.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to get the hell away from Merrick.

Nicky starts shivering before they’re halfway to the car. He doesn’t know if it’s because of whatever the Woman - Kozak, the others had called her - injected him with, or if it’s just because he doesn’t handle the cold well normally, but whatever the reason, he leans heavily into Joe’s warmth as the other man helps him walk unsteadily down the road.

Andy had tried to support Nicky on his other side when they left the building, but he’d flinched away from the touch and she had drawn her hand back like it burned. It hadn’t hurt, not really, but over the past few days (and god, is that really all it’s been?) he’s come to associate touch with nothing but pain. He knows these people won’t hurt him, but his body doesn’t seem convinced.

Joe’s touch, though. He hasn’t wanted to shy away from that once.

Nicky wraps his arms around his middle in an attempt to make his teeth stop chattering, and Joe gently pulls them both to a stop. “Here,” he says, shrugging out of his leather jacket. “This should keep you warm until we get to the car, there’s a change of clothes in there.”

He wraps the jacket securely around Nicky’s shoulders, hands lingering on the collar until he seems satisfied the coat isn’t going to slip off. “Sorry about the bullet holes,” Joe mutters, not quite meeting Nicky’s gaze.

“Thank you.” The leather feels strange against Nicky’s skin, but not in an unpleasant way. Without thinking about it, he turns to tuck his nose into the collar and inhales, and the scent that washes over him is somehow the most comforting thing he can imagine.

A contrast of emotions play across Joe’s face. He smiles a little at the way Nicky hugs the jacket closer to himself, but at the same time, the look in his eyes is unbearably sad. It doesn’t suit him, and Nicky desperately wants to soothe it away, if only he knew how.

He feels like he _should_ know how.

Nicky jumps a little as Andy appears at his side. “Do you want to wait here for us to come back with the car?” she asks, carefully maintaining her distance.

“No, I can make it…” Nicky does his best to give both her and Joe a reassuring smile. “Anyway, it feels good to stretch my legs.”

Andy and Joe both exchange a glance, then Andy nods and starts back down the road again. Joe half- raises his arm, a clear offer, and one that Nicky takes, once more letting the other man shoulder part of his weight as they follow Andy.

When they reach the car, Nicky takes the t-shirt that Nile offers him, reluctantly slipping out of Joe’s jacket as he does. The soft cotton of the shirt is soothing, at least, and honestly, Nicky is just glad for the chance to properly cover himself. He murmurs a quiet thank you to Nile before climbing into the back of the car, with her on one side of him and Joe pressed up against his other side.

As soon as Nicky settles in the backseat, the exhaustion hits him like a freight train and he slumps down with a grunt. Joe’s hand flies to his shoulder. “Nicolo?”

He hates the worry he hears in Joe’s voice, the lines of concern creasing his brow. “I’m all right. Just...tired.”

Joe relaxes a little. He strokes his thumb along Nicky’s neck before pulling away, and Nicky finds himself missing the touch immediately.

“We should be on the road for a while,” Joe says softly. “You should try to get some sleep.”

“Where to, back to Copley’s?” Booker asks as he turns the key in the ignition.

Andy shakes her head. “That’s the first place anyone would look.” She glances into the backseat. “Joe, do you and Nicky still have that cottage near New Aberdour?”

“Yeah,” Joe says, not bothering to look away from Nicky. “We haven’t been there since...1945, I think? So I don’t know what kind of shape it’s in.”

“Doesn’t matter, it’ll do for now.”

Nicky is only half listening to the conversation. He desperately wants to sleep - actually sleep, not just surrender to unconsciousness after his body gives out again - but he can’t shake the fear that if he does, he’ll wake up back on that table, Kozak slicing him open again…

Except then Joe is murmuring in his ear, “Sleep, Nicolo. You’re safe now.”

And somehow that quiet reassurance is all Nicky needs. He might not remember anything before the lab, but he knows, he _knows_ , that he’s safe with Joe.

That’s all he needs to let the exhaustion pull him under.

* * *

They haven’t even been on the road for five minutes before Nicky goes totally lax against Joe, his head coming to rest at an awkward angle on Joe’s shoulder. Joe automatically shifts a little, leaning back against the door so Nicky is half against his chest, his nose nudging Joe’s collarbone.

Before he even notices he’s doing it, Joe’s wrapped an arm around Nicky’s middle and turned to press a kiss to his hairline.

He freezes, waiting for Nicky to stir, but the warm, steady breaths on Joe’s skin don’t falter. Which isn’t surprising; coming back from death is always exhausting, and if Nicky’s time with Kozak was anything like Joe’s, it’s not just one death that he’s recovering from.

Joe swallows the growl building in his throat.

Kozak is dead. She’s dead, and while she died far, far too quickly for his liking, the important thing is that she will _never_ be able to lay a hand on Nicky again.

He indulges in one more kiss before forcing himself to pull his head back. Nicky doesn’t remember him, doesn’t remember _them_ (and god that hurts more than all of Kozak’s tortures put together), and Joe isn’t about to force his affections where they might not be welcome.

Joe tries to ignore the way that thought feels like a knife to the chest.

Nicky is safe. That’s what matters.

He leaves his arm where it is, unwilling to totally break contact with his love, not after being separated for so long. If Nicky wakes up and asks, Joe can just say that he wanted to make sure the other man wasn’t jostled too badly during the drive.

Nile catches his eye from across the backseat, a concerned furrow in her brow. “You doing okay?” she asks quietly.

“I don’t know.” It’s the truth.

She gives Joe a comforting smile, similar to the ones Joe has seen Nicky direct at frightened children. “He’ll be okay, Joe. We’ll help him remember.”

Joe swallows past the lump in his throat, suddenly so very grateful for this brave young woman who came crashing into their lives less than a week ago. He’s already thanked her, more than once, for getting them out of Merrick, but he’s been so distracted over the past few days that it hasn’t really hit him until now: if it weren’t for Nile, he’d still be strapped to that table, hundreds of miles away from Nicky, not even knowing what was being done to the love of his life.

That could have been their life for years. _Decades_.

And while Joe would have had Andy (and Booker, he begrudgingly adds), Nicky would have had to suffer all of it _alone_.

He feels the anger building up in his gut again and forces it back, settles for glaring daggers at the back of Booker’s head instead. There will be time for that later.

After Nicky remembers.

He _has_ to remember.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are gonna get angstier before they get better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah so I meant to update sooner but, y'know, writer's block/school/general brain junk. Oopsies. I wanted this chapter to be longer and I'm still not totally happy with it, but getting this much out was an Endeavor, so...
> 
> Trigger warning for very brief mentions of Booker-typical suicidal ideation.

The shower in the cottage - the one that he and Joe apparently own - is slow and freezing, and the water pressure is horrible, but all Nicky cares about is rinsing away any remaining traces of Kozak’s handiwork. By the time he’s satisfied, he’s shivering, but clean.

He towels himself off quickly, in a hurry to pull on the clothes Joe had pressed into his hands when he’d asked about taking a shower. The sweatpants and faded, worn sweater feel wonderful against his still-sensitive skin (although the sensitivity seems to finally be fading, Nicky’s pleased to note).

It’s an odd sensation when he catches sight of himself in the bathroom mirror. Nicky takes a couple of minutes to just stare at his reflection, at the face he somehow both does and doesn’t recognize, until he suddenly smells something amazing coming from the other end of the cottage and realizes how fucking _hungry_ he is.

Which makes sense. He literally can’t remember the last time he ate.

The others are where he left them, congregated in the combination kitchen-dining-living area that makes up the majority of the cottage. They all look up when Nicky comes in, varying degrees of concern written across their faces, like they expected something to happen to him in the ten minutes it took to shower.

“You look better,” Nile says, looking considerably more cheerful than the others. Nicky wonders if she’s always like that - and god, he has so many _questions_ for all of them it’s making his head hurt.

Nicky gives her a small smile and sits down at the table, his gaze moving around the room before falling, almost instinctively, to where Joe is standing over the stove. “That smells wonderful. What are you making?”

“Officially, _minestrone_. Unofficially, whatever I could find in the pantry that was still good.” Joe turns to smile at him, but Nicky can see that the smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Nile and I can go shopping later on, if we’re planning on staying for a while,” Booker says slowly, and Nicky knows he’s not imagining the way the others tense up when he speaks, the way Joe makes a point of not looking at Booker as he ladles the food into mismatched ceramic bowls.

He doesn’t set a place for Booker at the table. Booker doesn’t look surprised. Nicky will let himself wonder about that later, once he’s actually fucking _eaten_.

Nicky tries to resist shoveling the food into his mouth as fast as he can, intentionally pacing himself by asking some of the questions he’s had flying around his mind since he woke up in the car. The answers he gets are...impossible. Unbelievable. But he can’t think of any reason for these people to lie to him. The flashes of memories - he’s sure that’s what they were now, memories - match up with what they tell him, and even if they didn’t, he can’t come up with any other explanation for how he kept coming back in that lab.

He learns who the other woman he’d seen is, hears of her fate at the bottom of the ocean, and somehow that knowledge hurts, even if Nicky can’t remember her properly. He hears about Lykon, about how their immortality is a finite thing - and how Andy’s is apparently gone now. That hurts, too. More than Nicky would have expected it to.

There’s one question he desperately wants to ask, only he doesn’t know how, doesn’t know how to even begin to approach asking. Nobody has said anything, but Nicky knows, deep in his bones, that whatever the others are to him...Joe is something _more_.

Joe’s told him how they met, the endless cycle of killing each other and coming back until they both gave up, but he’s holding something back, Nicky can tell. But this doesn’t feel like the time or the place to ask.

Especially when Nicky isn’t certain he’ll like the answer he gets. He knows what he hopes for - and maybe it’s too soon to be feeling anything this strong for someone he can’t remember, even if they have known each other for nine hundred years - but he’s scared of finding out things aren’t the way his heart is telling them they are.

And even if his relationship with Joe was - is - like _that_ , he’s not the man Joe knows. Would it even be fair of Nicky to expect anything of him now?

He needs time before he can broach that subject. So he asks the other thing he’s been impatient to learn.

“How did I end up in that lab?”

A weighted, deceptively calm silence descends over the room, and Nicky instantly feels like he’s done something wrong. He watches Joe’s gaze harden and turn to Booker, who suddenly looks like he’s trying to shrink in on himself. “You should ask _him_ that question,” Joe says with a bitterness that absolutely doesn’t belong in his voice.

Andy sighs. “Joe…”

“You said we would deal with him later,” Joe bites back. “Well, it’s later. Or am I supposed to just forget that he turned us over to Merrick like we were lab rats?”

Nicky stares at Booker, turning that over in his mind. The Frenchman glances up and flinches when they make eye contact, guilt written all over his face...but also remorse. Regret. And so much self-loathing it almost hurts to look at him.

Andy and Joe are growing steadily louder as they argue, but Nicky’s quiet voice still cuts through the noise and tension as he simply asks, “Why?”

“It doesn’t matter why,” Joe starts.

“It does to me.” Nicky tries to make Booker meet his gaze again. “You seem like a good man, Booker. I might not remember you, but I don’t think you would do something like this without a reason. Tell me, please?”

Booker looks like he’s facing a firing squad. “I wanted...a way out,” he says slowly, the words coming out of his mouth like chewed glass. “I’ve wanted a way out ever since I watched my youngest son die, almost two hundred years ago...and I thought Merrick might be able to…” He trails off, fingers clenching around his fork. “It was only supposed to be me. But he wanted all of us...”

“But we...you all say we’re family.” Nicky frowns. “Were we not there for you?”

Booker makes a pained noise. Joe opens his mouth to say something, but seems to think better of it. “You were, Nicky, you were. All of you.” Booker casts his eyes, wide and repentant, around the table. “I was...too caught up in my own grief to see it. But you were. And none of you will ever know how sorry I am for what I did.”

Joe stands up abruptly, chair screeching against the rough wooden floor. “‘Sorry’ doesn’t make up for what we suffered at the hands of those people, Booker,” he says. “It doesn’t make up for the fact that you almost killed Andy. And it doesn’t get Nicky’s memories back.” His hands fist at his sides, and he gives Nicky a long, agonized look that Nicky can’t even begin to interpret before saying, “I need some air. I’ll be back.”

He pauses at Nicky’s side as he makes for the door, fingers just brushing Nicky’s shoulder, and his voice softens into something that holds none of the bitterness it did before. “Make sure you eat enough, Nico.”

And then Joe is gone, the front door swinging closed behind him.

* * *

Andy finds him half an hour later, sitting on the remains of the stone wall built along the edge of the property several centuries ago. She holds up a half-empty bottle of whiskey and two glasses as she sits, saying, “Found this in the pantry. Figured we should get it out of the house before Booker found it.”

Joe huffs. “It’s not even eight am.”

“Who gives a fuck?” Andy unscrews the cap, pouring a generous amount into one glass and handing it to him before taking a pull straight from the bottle. “I know it doesn’t fix anything, but…”

“Didn’t seem to help Booker much,” Joe mutters, but he downs the glass in one go just the same. The whiskey burns his throat, blissfully lessening the sharp ache in his chest for just a moment.

“No, it didn’t.” Andy settles down beside him, pouring out some whiskey into her own glass, but not making any move to drink more. She pointedly doesn’t look at him as she asks, “How are you doing, Yusuf?”

“Do we have to do this right now, boss?”

“I made the mistake of not checking in on Booker for two hundred years. I’m not making the same mistake with you.”

Joe exhales sharply, raking a hand through his curls before letting his head hang down towards his knees. “I don’t…” His voice breaks and he starts again. “He’s sitting right there, but he...he still feels so _far away_ , Andy. I just want to pull him into my arms and not let go, and I can’t, _I can’t_ , because he _doesn’t remember us_.” He digs the heels of his hands into his eyes, tries to push back the tears he can feel starting to prick the corners of his eyelids. “What if he never remembers?”

“He will.”

“But what if he _doesn’t?_ ” He’s been trying not to think about the possibility, but now that he’s acknowledged it, it’s all he can focus on. He’s always been terrified of Nicky dying - truly dying - before him, having to live without the love of his life...but he never imagined having to do it while Nicky was still alive.

Andy puts the bottle on the ground between them and brings her hand up to rest on Joe’s shoulder. “You managed to make him fall in love with you once. And that was after you both spent weeks killing each other. At least he won’t remember that, this time around.”

Joe feels a surge of love for the woman beside him, a wave of gratitude that she isn’t lost to him yet. He lets out a genuine, albeit weak, laugh - one that quickly morphs into a sob. And then he’s leaning into Andy as she wraps her arms around him, burying his face in her neck as he gives in and lets the tears come.

He cries for all of them. For Andy, who is going to have to adjust to a life without her immortality. For Nile, who has been thrust into all of this too fast, too young. For Booker, who felt so isolated by his pain that he felt this was the only option he had.

For Nicky, whose only memories of the past are of pain and fear, who has no idea how _important_ he is to all of them, who doesn’t know that for the past millennium he’s been Joe’s moon and sun and stars.

And Joe cries for himself. For the loss of his brother, the loss of Nicky’s memory, the loss of Andy that he knows he’ll have to face in the future. He lets the agony he suffered in that lab finally wash over him, the feelings of terror and helplessness still fresh in his mind. And he cries because as desperately as he loves Andy, she isn’t the one he wants to hold him as he falls apart.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is Nicky/Nile bonding and our boys finally have a Talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Getting near the end now - I'm thinking this is only going to have one or two more chapters.
> 
> Awkward question but uhhhhh would anyone be willing to hook a girl up with an invite to the Old Guard discord?

Nicky retreats to the bedroom after breakfast, claiming fatigue. Which isn’t a lie, not really. He’s _exhausted_. He’s overwhelmed and drained and he feels like he could sleep for a decade, but once he’s alone, he doesn’t. He perches on the edge of the bed and runs a hand through his hair and tries to will his thoughts into some semblance of calm.

It’s so much to take in. Too much. And he still has so many questions, ones that he’s not sure even the others can answer. He hadn’t had a chance to really process it before, but as he sits there all he can think about is the blank space where hundreds of years worth of memories should be, and how the future in front of him looks almost as blank, because what use can these people have for him like this?

They won’t abandon him, Nicky is sure of that much. But how long before they start resenting him for being a burden?

A soft knock on the door pulls him from his thoughts. He’s not sure he wants to see anyone right now, but he still says, “Come in,” without hesitation.

“Hey.” Nile smiles warmly at him as she opens the door, lessening the knot of anxiety in his gut a little. “Just wanted to see if you needed anything before Booker and I head out to the store. Andy and Joe are right outside, so you should be fine, but…”

She must sense what Nicky had been worrying about before she came in, because she’s quick to add, “Not that you’re not totally capable of taking care of yourself, obviously. We’re all just, y’know...It was rough on all of us, you being gone.”

Nicky smiles a little despite himself. “Honestly you’ve been hovering the least, I think.”

“Hey, don’t think I’m not worried too.” Nile takes a moment to study his face before coming further into the room. “Seriously, though, you doing okay?”

He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose as though it might jar something loose in his brain. “I still have so many questions…”

“I bet.” Nile gives him a rueful look. “I’m probably not the person to ask, though. I’ve been here for, like, a week. I think you and I spent maybe six hours together before...everything.”

There’s something oddly comforting about the knowledge that Nile is almost as much in the dark as he is, and Nicky thinks it’s that - along with the fact that Nile just seems like an inherently comforting person - that makes him start talking.

“I don’t...I don’t even know who I _am_ , Nile. The others gave me facts, history. My name, where I’m from. But none of that tells me-” He cuts himself off, making an apologetic noise. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be burdening you with this. Like you said, we barely know each other.”

Nile scoffs. “That doesn’t mean I don’t know _anything_.” She moves closer, eyes flitting from the mattress to him in silent inquiry, and Nicky promptly slides over to make room for her to sit down beside him. “There’s still plenty I can tell you. Like how you were the one who made me feel instantly welcome when I met all of you. Not that the others weren’t great.” She pauses. “Okay, Andy’s first impression could have been better. But you were so...warm. You made sure I ate and asked me about my family...You made me feel safe for the first time since my first death.”

Nicky blinks hard a couple of times, fighting off the telltale stinging around his eyes. “I’m glad. I think...I think that’s important to me. Taking care of people.”

“Andy literally called you the Team Mom at one point, so yeah. Booker’s explanation was just, ‘He’s Italian.’ And then he and Joe got into an argument over who was the Team Dad - Joe insisted it was him, since you’re Team Mom…” Nile trails off, like she’s realized she said something she might not have been supposed to say.

Maybe it’s not fair putting the responsibility of this question on her, but Nicky can’t stand _not knowing_ anymore. “Nile, I don’t quite know how to ask this, and if you can’t give me an answer it’s fine, but are Joe and I…” He’s not even sure what word to use. Boyfriends? Lovers? Husbands? None of the above?

There’s a small upturn of Nile’s lips that’s not quite a smile, but close to it. “You called him the love of your life at dinner that night.”

* * *

“We need to decide about him,” Joe mutters as he and Andy watch Booker drive off with Nile in the passenger seat.

Andy sighs. She knows that, she does. And it’s not like she isn’t still feeling the betrayal just as deeply as Joe is. But between her losing her immortality and Nicky losing his memories...she’s not sure she can face another upheaval right now.

“I don’t want to decide anything until Nicky is able to have a say. He deserves one. More than any of us.”

“So we just let Booker stay with us like nothing is wrong?” Joe is glaring, but she knows he’ll cave sooner rather than later. For Nicky’s sake, if not for hers. “How do we even know he won’t-”

“He’s not going to betray us again.” Andy’s unsure of a lot right now, but she’s utterly certain about this. “He learned his lesson.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that he _did_.”

Andy sighs, wishing she had Nicky’s gift for reasoning with Joe even at his most stubborn. “I promise you, we _will_ hold him accountable for what he did. But right now...This isn’t the time. You know it’s not. Our focus needs to be on Nicky.” She stands up slowly, wincing a little at the unfamiliar ache in her bones. “Now come on, it’s gonna start raining at any second and I know how much you hate getting your hair wet.”

* * *

Back in the house, Joe lasts all of twenty minutes before giving into the urge to check on Nicky. He knows it’s irrational but he just...he wants to be sure that Nicky is still there.

He goes carefully, having long since learned the perfect technique for moving around without waking his incredibly light sleeper of a husband, but to his surprise, Nicky is still wide awake when Joe pokes his head into the bedroom, sitting on the floor with his back against the bed, paging through one of the books from the nightstand.

Joe fumbles around for an excuse - which is ridiculous because this is _Nicky_ , he shouldn’t _need_ an excuse - but Nicky just smiles softly at him. “Hello.”

“Hi.” Joe hadn’t exactly planned what he’d do if Nicky was awake, and he stands there awkwardly for far too long before asking, “Can I come in?”

Nicky nods, still giving that soft smile that always makes Joe want to kiss him breathless - except he can’t do that, not now, and he doesn’t know when he’ll be able to do it again-

He cuts off that train of thought and moves across the floor to sit cross-legged beside Nicky. Only then does he realize that it’s not a book Nicky is looking through at all, but one of the many old sketchbooks Joe’s left lying around their safehouses over the years. Which wouldn’t be a problem if Joe didn’t know for a fact that this book, like all his others, is filled primarily with drawings of Nicky, several of which are intimate in a way that can’t be passed off as platonic.

It’s not that Joe doesn’t want Nicky to know about them. But he has no idea if Nicky even feels the same way anymore (and god even just thinking about that makes his breath stop for a couple of seconds). And he can’t in good conscience dump a nine hundred year relationship on Nicky’s plate when the other man is already dealing with so much, can he?

“Are these yours?”

Nicky’s voice cuts through the fog of impending panic. “I...Yes.”

“You’re very talented.”

Despite everything, Joe feels the familiar warmth rise to his cheeks, the same way it’s always done whenever Nicky compliments him, even after so many centuries. “I have a very inspirational muse,” he says without thinking, because that’s what he always says - and then he remembers. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t-”

The words catch in his throat as Nicky’s gaze pins him in place, eyes bright and perceptive, and Joe holds his breath, almost terrified of what Nicky is going to say.

“Nile told me I called you the love of my life.”

It’s careful, almost hesitant, like Nicky is expecting Joe to deny it. And while Joe knows it might be too much, too soon, there is absolutely no version of reality where he’s going to let Nicky question his place in Joe’s heart.

“You did.” He takes a deep, calming breath. “As you have been the light of mine for over nine hundred years.”

The silence that falls over the room is excruciating. Nicky’s gaze never leaves him, and Joe can see him turning the words over in his mind. He can only imagine what might be going through Nicky’s head, isn’t sure he wants to, isn’t sure he can handle Nicky confirming what Joe fears the most right now, and Nicky’s quiet, “I’m sorry,” breaking through the stillness only makes his chest seize up.

“For what?” Joe asks, like he doesn’t already know. _I’m sorry I don’t feel that way anymore, I’m sorry it can’t be like that between us now, I’m-_

“For not being him. The man you love.”

And that sends Joe’s train of thought careening off the track so violently he can almost hear the crash.

“Nico, no…” He can’t stand not touching Nicky another moment and reaches out to gently wrap a hand around his husband’s wrist. His grip is loose enough for Nicky to pull away if he wants, but still tight enough to be comforting for Joe. “Don’t say that. Memory or no, you are still my Nicolò.” Joe swallows roughly. “My heart is still yours, even if you can’t feel for me as you did before.”

Nicky’s eyes widen, like Joe has said something absurd. “I do, though. Or at least...I think I do.” He makes a noise of frustration, turning his wrist so that his own fingers can brush against Joe’s arm. “When I was in that lab, I saw flashes of you. All of you. I didn’t know who you were, but I clung to them. Especially you. Even when I didn’t know you, the briefest memory of your face was...everything.”

He shifts and Joe mirrors his movements, both of them turning so that they’re facing one another. Nicky changes his grip again, taking Joe’s hand in his own and, after a moment of hesitation, gently pulling it to hold against his chest. “I may not remember you. Not truly,” Nicky says softly. “But my heart does.”

Joe’s not sure which of them moves first, but like a wave crashing onto shore, they both surge forward, and he almost whimpers when Nicky’s mouth meets his own. He brings his free hand up to cup Nicky’s face, thumb stroking over his cheekbone as he drinks in the taste and feel of his beloved. Nicky kisses him the way he’s done for a millennium, like his body remembers what his mind doesn’t, and for a moment, Joe can almost forget anything is wrong.

“I’m sorry,” Nicky murmurs against his lips. “I can’t...You deserve better-”

Joe almost growls, fisting his fingers in Nicky’s t-shirt. “Don’t.”

“What if I never remember? How can I do that to you, how can I _ask_ that of you?”

The pain and dismay in Nicky’s voice are physically painful, painful enough to make Joe pull away in order to meet those beautiful green eyes that have been his guiding light for so very long. “ _Ya rohi_ ,” he says, cupping Nicky’s chin with every ounce of tenderness he can. “I have loved you for nine hundred years. I’ll spend another nine hundred reminding you, if that’s what it takes.”

And he kisses Nicky again. And again and again. Just because he can.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for the delay! School kind of took over my brain towards the end of the semester, and between that and Pandemic Brain I just did not have the energy to even look at this. This chapter did not quite go the way I wanted it to, but eh, that's how most of my writing turns out.
> 
> Getting close to wrapping this up - I'm hoping to finish it in just one or two more chapters. And then I can start on the nine hundred other fic ideas I've had for months.....

Nicky can’t sleep.

He’s not sure why; he’s still exhausted, and Joe is a comforting weight at his back, one arm wound protectively around his waist, but in the two hours since they went to bed, all Nicky’s done is stare blankly into the darkness of the room. It had been relaxing for a while, but now he’s started to get restless. Needs to move - needs to prove to his brain that he’s not still strapped to a table - but he’s wary of waking Joe up.

Experimentally, he shifts a bit, pulling away from Joe’s warmth. Joe gives a quiet grunt, his arm tightening a little, but apart from that he doesn’t stir.

A few more careful movements and Nicky is sliding out of the embrace, trying not to hiss as his bare feet hit the cold wooden floor. He reaches for the gun sitting on the nightstand more out of reflex than anything else, flicking the safety on and tucking it into the waistband of his sweatpants before he’s even really aware of doing so.

As he creeps down the hallway in easy silence, he wonders if this nocturnal wandering is a habit of his.

The dying logs in the fire cast long shadows over the living area as Nicky moves through it. Andy is stretched out on the couch - Nicky had offered her the bed, but she’d looked mildly offended, and he hadn’t pushed the matter - under a flannel quilt that’s seen better days. He recognizes the cocoon of blankets in the armchair as Nile, and for a moment he wonders if she can even breathe beneath all that before realizing that it probably doesn’t matter.

Booker is conspicuously absent.

Nicky frowns, stopping to pull the quilt up closer to Andy’s chin and to add another log to the fire, then grabs the tattered afghan from the back of the couch and slips out the back door. He has a pretty good idea of where he’ll find Booker.

The fenced-in area of the yard behind the house is too wild to properly be called a garden, but there’s still a pair of battered sun loungers on the edge of what passes for a patio. Nicky isn’t surprised to see Booker sprawled out in one, considering it’s where the Frenchman has spent most of the day. There’s an open bottle of whiskey loosely clenched in the hand Booker has hanging off the armrest, one that had been sealed and full when he and Nile got back from the store earlier.

Nicky doubts it’s full now.

“Are you here to lecture me?” Booker’s voice is rough, but not from sleep.

“Do I often lecture you?” Nicky asks, settling into the vacant lounger and pulling his knees up so he can wrap the afghan around his entire body.

The full moon gives just enough light for him to make out the wry smirk on Booker’s face. “When I do stupid things like spend the night outside in northern Scotland without so much as a coat, yes, you do.” 

“And how often do you listen?”

“About sixty percent of the time.” Booker huffs as he lifts the whiskey bottle to his lips. “Call it sixty-five.”

Nicky chuckles a little. He reaches for the bottle as Booker starts to put it down, but only to take a drink from it himself.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Booker asks as Nicky hands the bottle back.

Instead of replying, Nicky merely shakes his head and turns to stare up at the sky that is clear and dappled with stars, the complete opposite of the harsh fluorescent lighting in the lab. Something loosens a little in his chest - not disappearing completely, but lightening enough for him to breathe a little more easily.

He and Booker sit in silence for a long time before either of them speak again.

“The others want me to leave.”

Nicky turns to look at Booker again. “They don’t.”

“Joe does. Andy’s thinking about it. Nile doesn’t, but that’s just because she doesn’t really get how badly I fucked up.” Booker finally turns to face Nicky properly. “When you remember everything, you probably will too.”

Nicky wants to deny it, wants to reassure Booker that he’s part of their family and always will be, but he knows he can’t promise that. Without his memories, he’s like Nile - he knows Booker made a mistake, but he’s not sure if that mistake is forgivable or not.

So instead, he says, “Tell me how it happened. What made you...Why you made the choice you did.”

Booker looks a little surprised, and Nicky wonders if any of the others have even bothered to ask about this. “I...I ran into Copley in a bar in London. He recognized me from a job we did for him, bought me a drink. Told me his wife had died a month earlier.” He sighs. “My own wife’s birthday had passed just a few days before, so neither of us was in a very good place.”

Nicky senses where this is going. “You got drunk.”

“Absolutely smashed, both of us. I don’t remember everything that happened that night but we ended up on a park bench somewhere, just...talking. And I don’t know, I guess...being drunk and having someone who understood what I felt made me drop my guard.” Booker takes another swig from the bottle, exhaling slowly. “I didn’t tell him everything. I barely told him anything, really. Just enough-”

“For him to connect the rest of the dots himself,” Nicky finishes. 

Booker nods. “A year ago, he got in touch with me. Showed me everything he’d found. And then he offered me a deal.” He scrubs a hand over his face, self-reproach written in every movement. “It was supposed to just be me. That was Copley’s plan from the beginning. But Merrick wasn’t happy with just one of us, and by then I was already in over my head, and Merrick kept talking about all the lives we could save…Fucking _connard_ …”

“I’m sorry, Booker.”

It’s clearly not what Booker was expecting him to say, because he cocks his head in confusion. “For what?”

“We must have failed you very badly, if you were that desperate for a way out.”

“Nicolò…no.” Booker straightens up in his chair, his movements jerky and unsteady. “You’ve never failed me. None of you have.”

“Haven’t we? You say we’ve called each other family for two hundred years. And in all that time, it doesn’t seem like we ever realized just how deeply you were hurting.” Nicky reaches across the space between them and rests a hand on Booker’s arm. “I’m not saying what you did was justified. I know that, memory or not. But I also don’t believe you ever intended to hurt us so badly.”

“Never,” Booker chokes out, his eyes glinting a little in the moonlight. “On my sons’ lives.”

He sounds so agonizingly earnest that Nicky feels the urge to hug him. But he doesn’t know if the embrace would be welcome, so he settles for squeezing Booker’s arm. “I believe you. I can’t say I forgive you, not yet, but my heart tells me I will, in time. And I believe the others will, too.”

Booker trembles beneath his touch. It’s the only warning Nicky gets before a violent sob wracks the Frenchman’s entire body. The whiskey bottle slips from his fingers and smashes onto the cracked paving stones as Booker buries his face in his hands, shoulders convulsing.

The movement is instinctive as Nicky closes the space between them and pulls Booker into a crushing hug. Booker makes a pathetic noise, fingers twisting to tangle in Nicky’s t-shirt as he cries, the fabric muffling the choking moans that sound like they’re being physically torn from his throat.

Nicky isn’t certain how long they sit there like that, Booker sobbing into his chest, but after a long while the tremors start to die down, the sobs turning into whimpers before tapering off into silence as Booker slumps against him, unconscious. It’s not a restful sleep - Nicky can tell just by looking at Booker’s face as he carefully pulls away and settles the other man back onto the chair - but it’s still sleep.

He pulls the blanket from his own shoulders and drapes it over Booker, tucking it under his chin. As he straightens up, he becomes aware of another presence standing behind him in the doorway of the cabin. One that, memory or not, he recognizes immediately.

“How long have you been standing there?” Nicky asks, turning to see Joe leaning against the doorframe with his arms folded and a pensive look on his face.

Joe looks past him at where Booker is snoring slightly. “Long enough.” His expression softens when his eyes land on Nicky again, turning into something warm and affectionate that’s tinged with melancholy. “You have always been the kindest of us, my light. Even towards those who do not deserve it.”

Nicky makes a disapproving sound even as he steps into the warm arms Joe holds out in front of him. “I will decide who does and doesn’t deserve my kindness, my love,” he says, nestling into Joe’s chest. “And our brother does.”

Joe grunts. “I won’t argue with you, but only because I want to get you in out of this cold.” He noses at Nicky’s shoulder. “Otherwise we’d be out here until dawn, you infuriatingly stubborn man.”

* * *

When they’re back in bed, wrapped around each other beneath the blankets, Joe mutters, “He still needs to face punishment for what he did to you, Nicolò. What he did to all of us.”

“I know. I’m not saying he doesn’t.”

“You may forgive him, but I won’t.”

Nicky hums, feeling himself start to drift as Joe’s scent and body envelope him. “I think you will, my heart. I think you will.”


End file.
